(IACP Award winner for Literary Food Writing) In 1952, not long after she opened L'École des Trois Gourmandes in France with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, Julia Child sent an enthusiastic letter to Bernard DeVoto, who had written an article on American knives in Harper's. It was DeVoto's wife Avis who responded, and soon the two women were trading culinary and personal confidences on everything from McCarthysim to Alfred Kinsey's research on sexuality. When Julia writes that she and her friends are working on a cookbook, it is Avis who steers it first toward Houghton Mifflin and then to Knopf, where Mastering the Art of French Cooking was finally published. With commentary by food historian Joan Reardon, the more than 200 letters collected here are frank, bawdy, funny, affectionate, and occasionally agonized, revealing both Julia's transformation from a new bride in Paris to the worldly and adventuresome wife of a diplomat, and America on the verge of political, social, and gastronomic transformation.

"The women's frank, tender letters are an absolute delight to read, as much for their mouthwatering discussion of cuisine as for the palpable fondness they portray for one another. In an early note, DeVoto calls Child's evolving manuscript 'as exciting as a novel to read,' and, indeed, so are their conversations."—Booklist (starred review)